Owner, Manage Thyself, Part II

By Andrew J. Birol, President, Birol Growth Consulting, Inc.

Last month I talked about the three roles you must play as a business owner and how to tie what you accomplish to what you earn. As noble as this sounds, it is hard enough just to tie daily activities to your goals. This month I will show how to best spend your time to make the greatest impact. As owner, leader, and product number one, what can you do to make progress towards your goals everyday?

Consider this. Regardless of whether you are running a service, manufacturing, retail or distribution business, you can distill all your day-to-day efforts into three areas: Selling, Delivering and Developing your business.

Defining the Big Three:

Selling is the activity that starts and keeps your company rolling. Even if you know exactly what you want the customer to buy, the sales activity moves your product off the shelf or gets your people hired. Therefore, the most important short-term activity to focus your efforts on is learning to sell what your company makes. By learning to uncover customer pain and prospect opportunity, you drive your company’s business forward. You know you are doing this effectively when you propose to three of every ten prospects you meet with and close one of the three prospects you meet with. So, as you lead your business forward and are probably also serving as your company’s top sales person, perfect your selling process and build your sales funnel. Become excellent at identifying which of your qualified prospects to propose to and which ones are likely to close and when.

Deliver what you like making and have succeeded at producing to others satisfaction. Link this to exactly what you sell. To do this, determine your best and highest use and assure it meets your client’s needs. Hone it, codify it and make it distinctive. As you make your product ever better, raise your company’s description and your client’s perception of its differentiation while lowering your cost of delivery.

The third part is to develop your company’s long-term ability to perform at higher levels. Understand what it takes to develop prospects and build the top half of your sales funnel. Meanwhile brand what you sell while continuing to distill and expand you and your company’s best and highest use. As you do this, narrow your target market and pursue greater opportunities to resolve customer pain and lead them to greater opportunities to grow your customer’s business.

Why are the Big Three all important and always at the same time?

By focusing on selling, delivering and developing your company at the same time, you will be successfully spending every moment of your business life focusing on the right company goals. Here’s how:

Selling solves your short-term revenue needs

Delivering ensures you exchange value for money

Development means you continually build and fortify your growing brand

Why are all three important and any two won’t work?

Sell and deliver and your business will always live no greater than hand to mouth.

Sell and develop and your poor value will drive your customers away.

Develop and deliver and you will go out of business because no customers will ever get sold.

While you are undoubtedly thinking about all the things you must get done very day, think first about the Big Three. If you are making equal and balanced progress in each area, you are helping your business to thrive both in the short term as well as in the long term. And in doing so, your daily activities can always stay on track and give you confidence your goals will be achieved.